A Matter of Conviction

Usually, Hank was a careful and meticulous worker, preparing his cases with the preciseness of a mathematician. It was his contention that a lawyer should never make the mistake of thinking a jury would appreciate subtleties. Beginning with the assumption that a jury knew nothing whatever about the law or the case being tried, it was his task to present the facts so that, once understood, they led to an inescapable conclusion. In offering the facts, he tried to leave nothing to the imagination. Piece by piece, he built his jigsaw puzzle. By the time he was ready to make his closing statement, the scattered evidence would have locked together into a clear and indisputable picture from which one conclusion, and one conclusion alone, could be drawn. The skill of such a trial performance depended largely upon the groundwork he did in his office before the trial. It was no simple task to batter a jury with facts and at the same time leave them convinced that they had done all their own reasoning. He was, in a sense, demanding total identification from them. Moving from the jury box into the figure of the prosecutor, they were in the position of being able to assay the facts as he himself had done earlier. But, and he knew this with the instincts of an actor, the jury needed more than identification. They demanded, too, a performance. They wanted to see a show, especially in a murder trial. And so it became important to decide which witnesses preceded others, how the testimony given could be presented so that it built to a logical and seemingly effortless climax of overwhelming truth. And, in addition to this, he had the defense’s case to worry about. He had to be prepared for whatever they might hurl at him. In effect, he had to prepare two cases — his own, and the defense’s as well.

His desk on that Monday morning three weeks before the trial was a clutter of disorder. Slips of paper covered its top, each held in place with a metal paperweight. Large lined pads were filled with scribbled notes. Folders of testimony taken by civil-service stenographers were stacked at one corner of the desk. A folder containing the psychological report rested near his telephone. And his memo pad held jottings of things yet to do:

Call Police lab! Where the hell is report on knives?

See Johnny Di Pace?

Leader of Thunderbirds — Big Dom?

Jennie’s birthday, August 26

In the midst of the disorder, there was an order known only to Hank. It disturbed him that the police laboratory had not yet presented its report on the murder weapons. On his tentative mind graph of the trial’s chronological progression, he could visualize the presentation of the weapons as one of the highest peaks on the steadily rising dramatic line. He intended to start with witnesses who would testify to the events leading up to the killing, intended to reconstruct that July night in the courtroom as if it were happening before the jury’s eyes. He could almost hear his words now — “The boys put these knives into their pockets, these knives. They are not penknives. They are not knives used for mumblety-peg. They are weapons.” And then he would press the stud on one of the knives and allow the blade to snap open. He knew the device would be effective. Props were always effective and knives automatically generated excitement. There was something inherently menacing about a knife, any knife. A switch blade held the added element of surprise, the long blade snapping from the handle with sudden viciousness. And he knew, too, that most people would rather face the snout of an automatic pistol than stare at the tempered steel length of a blade. In the mind of the ordinary citizen, a shooting was something which happened in the movies. But every ordinary citizen had cut himself accidentally at one time or another, had seen the flow of blood, had known what a knife or a razor blade or a seemingly harmless kitchen utensil can do to flesh.